Carman, Patrick. Skeleton Creek: Ryan’s Journal. 185 p. Scholastic Press. 2009. ISBN 978-0-545-07566-4. This book is scary. What’s really cool about it is that it’s part book/part video. Ryan and Sarah are teenage best friends who are no longer allowed to see each other because of some serious trouble they got in.Ryan loves writing and Sarah loves taking video. So it makes sense that while Ryan writes in a journal to tell his side of the story, Sarah shoots the video footage to tell her side. You can’t understand the book with just one or the other—you have to read the story and watch the videos.The chapters tell Ryan’s side of the story through journal entries. At the end of some of the chapters, there is a website to go to that has Sarah’s video’s telling her part of the story. To enter the website, you must enter the different passwords given to you throughout the book.

They started their research at the library, where crotchety Gladys Morgan reluctantly loaned them a milk crate of old yellowed newspapers, warning them to read them, and “then let everything just be, and stop looking for answers”. They didn’t know at the beginning the trouble they would find.

Do they wish they hadn’t gone into the woods? Do they wish Sarah hadn’t shot the video? Sure. But that didn’t change anything. They still had to find out the secret of Skeleton Creek’s name. And they ignored every danger sign. They went too far, asked too many questions. And they learned about things that they never wanted to learn about.

For a good, intense, and scary book, check out Skeleton Creek: Ryan’s Journal by Patrick Carman.